Are you sure there is a real Davis under the issues, or maybe the issues are part of who he is?

Hi Annabel, I am impressed by your writing and your journey. I see a good bit of myself in your thinking and overthinking. I am a champion over-thinker, too!

I was in a long term relationship with a man who lived with dysphoria followed by minor and then major depression. That depression was a part of who he was for all of the years we were together. He acknowledged it. Waiting for the best parts of him to emerge for a month here and a week or two there required a lot of patience on my part. I loved him, so I was patient. I struggled on and off to get him into therapy. It was an exhausting and delicate dance, and eventually he went, but he was so proud and afraid (he had a PhD in psychology), just that process caused him to mistrust me and pushed us further apart. I concur with one of nycindie's earlier responses, it may be that a depressed person has to come to terms with and take responsibility for his or her own mental health, and however long it takes is how long it takes. Are you prepared to have that story, good or bad, be an interactive part of your life, perhaps for many years?

I can't say that I regret staying in that relationship for as long as I did. I don't know that his life would have been much different without me. I sometimes wonder how my life would have turned out without his depression affecting our joint decisions.

In my experience, it's hard to have a healthy and functional relationship with someone who doesn't have a functional relationship with themselves. I'm not hearing that Davis' problems are severe. Your situation is not what mine was, and I can't know how Davis feels. I can empathize that when a partner's life experiences are skewed by depression, it's really tough to have "open and strong communcation" and find common ground. I wish you both the best and will be looking forward to updates on everyone.